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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (9121)	3/19/2001 4:01:53 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

are you saying that we should just go along with whatever "the experts" say about the risks? Seems to me that part of risk assessment for us ordinary folk is judging when to trust the experts. We have to trust them sometimes. There's no way we can all be sufficiently knowledgeable or equipped to test and evaluate everything by ourselves. Where there's data from a reputable source, I'm willing to accept it--the data from the crash test dummies, for example. If the experts say that the chance of getting lung cancer from a certain exposure to asbestos is one in a thousand or one in ten million, that's close enough for my purposes. I'm really just interested in orders of magnitude. The former seems risky and the latter seems not. Where there's no data and just opinions, we're still dependent upon experts to a large extent to at least give us a sense of the probability of a bad outcome. If we're knowledgeable in the subject area and know someone who is, we can assess the expert opinions more critically. If not, we can merely judge if the opinion seems credible--if it makes sense, if it's been peer reviewed, if the expert has a vested interest, how long the opinion has been around, etc. That's the first half of the equation--likelihood of occurrence. The second half of the equation--how serious the implications--we have to decide for ourselves. If what we're risking is $100, some people might find that nominal and others might find it unbearable. If we're risking the loss of a fingernail, Vanna would probably care a lot, some people would care a little, and some wouldn't care at all. I don't think an expert can help us there. Karen